The continued expansion of the Internet has led to the establishment of a multitude of online social networking communities with members having such diverse interests as business, sports, technology, dating, parenting, real estate, etc. In a typical online scenario, an online user may receive an invitation over the Internet from a friend or colleague to join a particular online community, or may seek to join the online community on his or her own accord. As part of the process of joining the online community, the online user may be required to set up an account including a username and a password, as well as a personal profile listing his or her activities, interests, education, employment positions, experiences, company, organization, etc. Once the account is set up, the online user can add contacts to his or her personal network within the online community by sending invitations over the Internet to friends and/or colleagues who may accept the invitations, and, in a likewise fashion, may add contacts to their own personal networks within the online community. In this way, a vast social network of online users can be created, in which each online user can have a number of direct contacts within his or her own personal network, and possibly a number of indirect contacts through others within the online social networking community.
In recent years, it has become increasingly common for online users to use their memberships in online communities to obtain answers to certain questions, and/or to identify providers of certain services, from among the members of the respective online communities. For example, a homeowner may seek to obtain an answer regarding how best to approach a difficult home repair project, or a young couple may wish to identify a real estate agent for purchasing their first home in a desirable neighborhood. To those ends, the homeowner and/or the young couple may submit one or more queries to search a database of their online membership community, ultimately obtaining one or more listings of search results that may or may not contain information that is most useful to the homeowner or young couple.
One factor that the homeowner or young couple may consider in determining the value of such information obtained in a database search of their online membership community is the trustworthiness of the source of the information. For example, in response to the homeowner's query pertaining to the difficult home repair project, a listing of search results may include the uniform resource locators (URLs) of websites belonging to a number of local contractors. Likewise, in response to the young couple's query pertaining to the real estate agent, a listing of search results may include the URLs of websites belonging to a number of local real estate offices. To obtain an indication of the trustworthiness of such local contractors or real estate offices, the online community may employ a conventional reputation system that allows its members to compose testimonials about the respective contractors or real estate offices, and/or to rate or endorse the respective contractors or real estate offices. The reputation system may then store the members' testimonials, ratings, and/or endorsements in association with public profiles of the respective contractors or real estate offices in the database of the online membership community.
However, such testimonials, ratings, and/or endorsements provided through conventional reputation systems may have questionable value, particularly in view of the fact that that members of online social networking communities often do not have direct or even indirect contact with one another outside of the online community, and therefore may have limited personal experience with and/or knowledge of the various individuals, service providers, and/or companies and organizations within the online community. Moreover, such ratings and/or endorsements are typically provided with reference to a scale (e.g., star ratings, letter grades), which provide little information about what is actually being rated and/or endorsed (e.g., a particular employee, an individual experience, cleanliness, etc.). As a result, the members of such online communities may find it difficult to rely upon and have confidence in (i.e., “trust”) the sources of the information they may receive, for example, in response to database searches of their online membership communities.